441 pages : 24 cm

This volume of Shelley's biography recounts his final years of greatest creativity and his often-painful emotional and romantic entanglements. Leaving Lord Byron in Switzerland, Shelley returned to England with Mary Godwin, their son, and Mary's ever-present stepsister, Claire Clairmont, pregnant with Byron's daughter. After his wife Harriet's shocking suicide, Shelley married Mary, who completed Frankenstein as he reluctantly revised his blasphemous epic of revolution and incest, Laon and Cythna. Legally deprived of his two children his first marriage, Shelley felt ostracized for his radical political, social, and religious beliefs. Financial pressure, attacks by critics, and health concerns prompted Shelley's 1818 move to Italy

Includes bibliographical references (pages 399-422) and index

1. The Dark Autumn of Suicides -- 2. Albion House: The Last English Year -- 3. "Paradise of exiles, Italy" -- 4. Euganean Isles of Misery: Venice -- 5. Paradise of Devils: Naples -- 6. Roman Tragedy and Creativity -- 7. Leghorn's "sad reality" -- 8. "a voice from over the Sea" -- 9. Florentine Voices: Unacknowledged Legislator and Sophia Stacey -- 10. Poetic Mothers: Pisa and Leghorn -- 11. Baths of San Giuliano -- 12. "Emily ... my heart's sister" -- 13. "Love in Desolation Masked" -- 14. The Last Pisan Winter -- 15. Drawn to the Sea -- 16. A "water eclipse" -- 17. Life Terminable and Interminable

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